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Dark Souls II has met with both rave reviews and player backlash. Both are totally justified responses.

The rave reviews have a simple explanation: Dark Souls II is an excellent game. Indeed, it's a game that gets better and better the deeper you battle your way into its dungeons and keeps.

But the player backlash has little to do with gameplay.

The previews we saw of Dark Souls II showed a much prettier game with a lighting system that seemed to plunge the world of Drangleic into deep darkness, traversable only with the help of a trusty torch. The retail console version of the game still looks good, but not nearly to the same degree.

Yesterday publisher Bandai Namco and developer From Software released a statement explaining that the changes were made due to balancing issues. Light on details, it leaves us with more questions than answers.

I've spoken with a source close to the development of the game who was willing to go into greater depth on what they believe happened between the preview builds and the final product---a product which would have apparently played like the notoriously mangled Blighttown without a graphics downgrade.

"This is what it comes down to: a playable framerate. The early builds that the screenshots came from were playable but only just so. The game was not in a state where it could be sold at that point. I strongly suspect that they were focusing heavily on delivering a top-notch experience on PC and underestimated the challenges the new systems would pose on PS3 / Xbox360. That's my analysis, anyway. But, factually, the early builds played like Blighttown the entire game.

"I sincerely don't think they intended to deceive, but in the end they sacrificed a huge amount of graphical fidelity at the very end of development because they couldn't resolve the framerate in any other way. They had to promote the game with screens and trailers, but at that time even they had no idea they were going to have to drop the settings so much, I suspect.

"I want people to know the truth. I know a lot of people just feel lied to, but I think the reality is a bit different. It doesn't mean they handled it properly, but I think they made the only decision they COULD make in the end. The game would have been much worse without the change (as in, many would call it unplayable and broken.)"

It's no surprise that performance issues were the root cause of the downgrade---though it is puzzling that a decision wasn't made until the very end of development.

On the other hand, this may be good news for PC gamers. If From Software was so focused on making a great, visually stunning experience on PC, then it's quite possible that the PC version will look and play the way the game looked and played in preview builds.

Bandai Namco has told me that more information about the PC release will land in April prior to launch. Hopefully we get a clearer sense of where the game is at that time.

This may also point to a PS4/Xbox One Dark Souls II release down the road, given that the game's new engine was designed with next-gen in mind.

“We always had in mind the next generation, such as DirectX11 and next generation hardware when creating our technology, and also challenged ourselves as programmers to simultaneously create for the new generation,” From Software programmer Takasuke Ando told IGN in February.

“The thing we prioritized when re-creating our engine was, as a concept, taking the graphics to a more photo-realistic look, and in order to fulfill this, we had decided to discard our old engine and create a new one.”

For my part, I agree that this was not handled nearly as well as it should have been. I doubt anybody would have cared if they'd simply been upfront about the changes beforehand.

When discussing how next-gen the graphics engine was, for instance, they could have mentioned that the version landing on PS3 and Xbox 360 simply wasn't up to the task.

In the end, making the downgrade to save the framerate and playability of the game was the right decision, and the controversy over it could have been avoided. Here's to hoping the PC release lives up to expectations.

You can read the first part of my Dark Souls II review here. Read my list of complaints about the game here.